आम्ही नेटकेची ना लिहू...There Is No Such Thing as ‘Proper Marathi’

विलास सारंग: "… मराठी साहित्यात समुद्राच वास्तव किती सातत्याने दुर्लक्षित केलं आहे, हे माझ्या विवेचनाच सार होतं… आपण वास्तवाच्या -वाङमयीन सामग्रीच्या- केवढ्या मोठ्या भांडाराला मुकतो आहोत, हे माझ्या लेखात निर्देशित केलं आहे...मराठी वाङमयातील समुद्राची अनुपस्थिती मराठी समाजाच्या संरचनेशी कशी निगडीत आहे, हे माझ्या लेखात स्पष्ट केलेलं आहे."

 ("वाङमयीन संस्कृती व सामाजिक वास्तव", 2011, पृष्ठ 66-67)

विलास सारंग: "… एक आश्चर्याची गोष्ट म्हणजे 'महाभारता'वर आधारलेली सोफिस्टिकेटेड सांस्कृतिक मूल्यावर उभी राहिलेली एकही प्रभावी नाट्यकृती (इतक्या शतकांत) निर्माण झाली नाही, जिने जनमानसावर सर्वकष मोहिनी टाकली आहे. इ. स. 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."
('वाङ्‌मयीन संस्कृती व सामाजिक वास्तव', 2011)

विलास सारंग: "…मला कधी वाटतं, १८९० साली हरिभाऊनी जरा विचार केला असता: 'आपण कशाला ब्रिटीश वाङमयाचं शेपूट पकडून राहायचं?' आपलं कथाकथन विकसित करायचं. एवढं काही कठीण नाही. काफ्काच्या 'मॅटॅमॉर्फसिसचं पहिल वाक्य घ्या. 'पंचतंत्रातल्या एखाद्या गोष्टीत ते फिट बसलं असतं. एवढी फँट्सी झाली. उरलेल्या कथेत वास्तववाद आहेच…इ. स. १९०० पासून आजवर पाश्च्यात्यांनी  आपल्या  वाङमयाकडे ढुंकून  बघितलेलं  आहे का? त्यांना आपल्या कथासाहित्यात  वेगळ, नवीन काही आढळल  नाही … " 

  ('लिहित्या लेखकाचं वाचन', 2011)

विलास सारंग, सदानंद रेग्यांच्या मृत्यू नंतरचा लेख, 1982: "...मराठी कवितेच्या कोंदट, कोत्या, ‘इनब्रीडिंग’ने कोळपलेल्या वातावरणात सदानंद रेग्यांची कविता हा एक मोकळा वारा होता. हा वारा आता वाहायचा थांबला आहे."

The New Yorker's regular contributor and writer, Adam Gopnik on learning language from his son, Luke: 

"...And so now every night, the last thing we do, me from my bedroom and Luke from his, is to send each other an instant message, and we always end it “LOL.”

“LOL, Dad!”

“LOL, Luke!”

And it doesn’t matter what it means. It means laughter or love, or whatever it might mean at that moment to us."

John McWhorter, The Daily Beast, May 10 2015:

 “Essay-level writing as a basic skill is no longer the norm. Speaking is, however, and that style has influenced our writing. Get over it, grammarians...”
 
भालचंद्र नेमाडे, लोकसत्ता, August 14 2015:

"...मराठीच्या व्याकरणातील क्लिष्टता काढली तर मराठी माणसाचा मेंदू किती तरी हलका होईल, असे सांगत त्यांनी मराठीत शुद्धलेखनासाठी केल्या जाणाऱ्या आग्रहावरच आपला टीकेचा आसूड ओढला. ऱ्हस्व-दीर्घ असे वेगवेगळे प्रकार ठेवण्याऐवजी ते एकच का असू नये, असा विचार त्यांनी मांडला..."

George Orwell wrote a famous essay 'Politics and the English Language' in April 1946. It's probably one of the most quoted document on the subject of language.

Will Self says about it:

"...Orwell's essay, Politics and the English Language, is frequently cited as a manifesto of plainspoken common sense - a principled assault upon all the jargon, obfuscation, and pretentiously Frenchified folderol that deforms our noble tongue. Orwell - it's said by these disciples - established once and for all in this essay that anything worth saying in English can be set down with perfect clarity such that it's comprehensible to all averagely intelligent English readers.The only problem with this is that it's not true - and furthermore, Orwell was plain wrong...

As for most people who bother with the matter admitting that English is in a bad way - hardly. Since 1946, when Orwell's essay was published, English has continued to grow and mutate, a great voracious beast of a tongue, snaffling up vocabulary, locutions and syntactical forms from the other languages it feeds on. There are more ways of saying more things in English than ever, and it follows perfectly logically that more people are shaping this versatile instrument for their purposes.

The trouble for the George Orwells of this world is that they don't like the ways in which our tongue is being shaped. In this respect they're indeed small "c" conservatives, who would rather peer at meaning by the guttering candlelight of a Standard English frozen in time, than have it brightly illumined by the high-wattage of the living, changing language.

Orwell and his supporters may say they're objecting to jargon and pretension, but underlying this are good old-fashioned prejudices against difference itself. Only homogenous groups of people all speak and write identically. People from different heritages, ethnicities, classes and regions speak the same language differently, duh!..."
 

Ms. Madhuri Purandare (माधुरी पुरंदरे)'s set of two books 'Lihave Netake' (लिहावे नेटके )  was published in c 2010. 

(according to  J.T. Molesworth's dictionary: नेटके= Neat, handsome and according to Google Translate it means compact.)

Bookganga.com says: "नेटके लिहिणे, नेमके बोलणे ही भाषेची मूलभूत कौशल्ये आहेत. अनेकदा तीच दुर्लक्षित राहतात आणि मग भाषा फार सैलपणे वापरली जाते. शालेय मुलांना लहानपणीच मराठी भाषेची लज्जत चाखत ती अचूकपणे आत्मसात करता यावी, या उद्देशाने माधुरी पुरंदरे यांनी ‘लिहावे नेटके’ हा पुस्तकसंच विकसित केला आहे."

( Compact/ neat/ handsome/precise writing and speaking are the fundamental skills of a language. Often they are ignored and the language gets used loosely. To facilitate school going kids to appreciate and accurately  learn Marathi, Madhuri Purandare has developed the 'Lihave Netake' book-set.)

 Ms. Purandare elaborates her experience of  how a class of school teachers studied these books here. 

"...आता शिक्षिकांचा आत्मविश्‍वास वाढताना स्पष्ट दिसू लागला होता...त्यांचे साप्ताहिक अभ्यासवर्ग नेमाने आणि उत्साहाने सुरू होते. पुस्तकांच्या आकाराचे दडपण आता उरले नव्हते. ‘अभ्यास करताना थांबूच नये, पुढे पुढे जात राहावं असं वाटतं’; ‘दुकानांच्या अशुद्ध पाट्या, वर्तमानपत्रांमधला चुकीचा मजकूर, टीव्हीच्या बातम्यांमधल्या चुका पूर्वी दिसायच्या नाहीत. आता सारख्याच दिसतात आणि त्रास होतो,’ अशा प्रतिक्रिया यायला लागल्या होत्या..."

The key sentence there is what teachers felt as they studied the books :

"...दुकानांच्या अशुद्ध पाट्या, वर्तमानपत्रांमधला चुकीचा मजकूर, टीव्हीच्या बातम्यांमधल्या चुका पूर्वी दिसायच्या नाहीत. आता सारख्याच दिसतात आणि त्रास होतो..."
(...incorrect nameplates of shops, erroneous content in newspapers, errors in TV news were not noticed earlier. But now they were always noticed and were annoying...)

 How can nameplates of shops be incorrect? A shop keeper is running a business and as long as she is achieving her business goals, her nameplate is OK.

Personally I haven't seen a single incorrect nameplate on a shop in Maharashtra. However, occasionally, I have felt and experienced the arrogance, stupidity and the absence of mercantile mentality behind those nameplates.  

If TV news is 'erroneous', most likely it is MEANT to mislead or misinform or not give the complete picture. That is the problem of the medium and not the language. Most of the time Marathi TV news is 'bad' and not because of the language they use but because what they choose as news and the way they report it.

In short, Ms. Purandare's books sound like pedantry and Orwellian conservatism to me.

I wish to quote Oliver Kamm on the subject. 

"There Is No ‘Proper English’...Pedantry is poor manners, certainly, but also poor scholarship. If someone tells you that you “can’t” write something, ask them why not. Rarely will they have an answer that makes grammatical sense; it is probably just a superstition that they have carried around with them for years."

"Language sticklers typically depict themselves as defenders of tradition against the insidious forces of cultural relativism. This is nonsense. In fact, the pedantic urge is a modern invention of rather dubious lineage. Prescriptive style guides like Strunk and White’s “Elements of Style” are the direct descendants of 18th-century grammarians who first defined what it was to speak “proper English.” In fact, these grammarians really just meant the dialect that grew up in and around London; their manuals were intended to teach propriety to an emerging merchant class."

I feel the most important issues facing Marathi are summed up in the quotes of the late Vilas Sarang at the top of this post and, maybe, just maybe, excessive pedantry among Marathi speaking people is partly responsible for them.

Emoji are the ideograms or smileys used in Japanese electronic messages and Web pages, the use of which is spreading outside Japan. What if they start appearing in Marathi texts? Will they annoy students of Ms. Purandare's book?

 

Artist: Cameron Harvey, The New Yorker, April 2015

p.s.

After I published the post, I learned on May 5 2015 that "Microsoft plans to introduce a range of new emoji with Windows 10 including a controversial 'middle finger' hand sign.". 

I wonder where this will fit in 'neat Marathi'.

courtesy: Daily Mail

 

Amrapali of History and Vaijayantimala's

Today April 29 2015 is International Dance Day

विलास सारंग, 'अमर्याद आहे बुद्ध', 2011, पृष्ठ  85:
 "....अशा तऱ्हेने आम्रपाली स्वतःचे  नाक, कान, भिवया,  दात, हात अगदी स्तनही  वर्णन करते:

'पहले कभी मेरे स्तन जीन (पुष्ट) एवं वर्तुल (गोल)  होने के कारण अतिसुन्दर दिखते थे। आज वेणा दुर्बल एवं नीचे तक लटक गये है।' …"

Art from the ACK title 'Amrapali' by C.M. Vitankar

I have not seen more sensuous dance in a Hindi film than the one by Vaijayantimala in Lekh Tandon's Amrapali, 1966.

When I first read the late Mr. Sarang's book, quoted above, I felt Amrapali was not just describing her own breasts- 'मेरे स्तन जीन (पुष्ट) एवं वर्तुल (गोल)  होने के कारण अतिसुन्दर दिखते थे'- but also of Ms. Bali's.

"Neel Gagan Ki Chhaon Mein..."

courtesy: Ultra, India

ओ हो हो ! काय अद्भुत सौंदर्य हो !... The Sun on the Ganges...Avalanche on Everest

Of  hundreds of  Vasant Sarwate (वसंत सरवटे) cartoons I have seen and loved, this probably is the most moving....

This is from Sarwate's book 'Sawdhan! Pudhe Valan Aahe!' (सावधान! पुढे वळण आहे!), 1990.

It is the second picture from a series of three but for me it stands on its own.

The guy (with a kind of skates) has missed the turn, is airborne and is heading towards a crash. All that is there to save him is the umbrella. In the earlier picture, he has started opening it and in those few seconds has managed to open it.

We (and probably Sarwate) hope he will be able use it like a parachute to land safely. But it's just a hope. Most likely we know how it's going to end.

But meanwhile look at what the guy is saying:

 "ओ हो हो ! काय अद्भुत सौंदर्य हो !" (oh...oh! What an awesome beauty!)

That's the wonder of life on Earth that doesn't end not just in air but even in space.

When I was watching 'Gravity', 2013, I remembered this picture.

The most moving scene for me in the film is when Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney) drifts away in the space towards a certain death. 

His final words are:

 "Oh, my God... Wow. Hey, Ryan?...You should see the sun on the Ganges. It's amazing". 

(Watch it on YouTube here.) 

courtesy: Warner Bros

p.s. 

After I finished writing the post, earthquake struck  in Himalayas. The avalanche that resulted. from the quake killed people at Everest. I am sure seconds, minutes, hours before they died, they too would have exclaimed: 'oh...oh! What an awesome beauty!' ('ओ हो हो ! काय अद्भुत सौंदर्य हो !')

Soaked in Books

Today April 23 2015 is a World Book Day

Arts & Letters Daily, April 2015: 

"In Victorian London, intellectuals looked for love in the British Museum’s reading room."

Alejandro Zambra, Chile:  

“My books would be very different if I had written them in another room, looking out another window.”

 

Photograph by Bill Waldman. Body paint by Adam DuShole.

courtesy: Dangerous Minds